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What is HydraFacial? Maxine Briggs reviews this super-fast cleansing treatment

Maxine Briggs discovers HydraFacial, a quick way to plump and hydrate your skin in 30 minutes

It sounded too good to be true. A 30-minute facial that would cleanse, extract, hydrate and build collagen levels, completely painless and delivered through a magic pen.

Apparently, this is the latest thing in facials, using Vortex technology with a unique suction action and delivery system, removing impurities and delivering the good stuff to a deeper level of the skin.

Even though it sounds super high-tech, the actual treatment is performed in a comfy chair where you don’t need to lie down. The first stage is cleaning – hydradermabrasion – which is an incredibly gentle vacuuming of the skin, so light and gentle it’s like being licked by kittens, to remove dead skin cells.

And the best bit is all the dirt that comes off your face is captured in a glass container, which may sound gross (and it is a little bit), but it’s also fascinating to see how dirty your face really is.

I was shocked as a dedicated double cleanser at how filthy my skin was, but with all my daily commuting and London city living, it had built up. After this rather unsettling revelation, a brightening agent is applied to unclog the pores and some more vacuuming to remove any remaining grime.

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Now the skin is beautifully clean and ready to be fed lots of lovely things. A wonderful cocktail of hyaluronic acid, peptides and antioxidants to deeply hydrate and plump is driven into the skin using the magic pen, again completely painless, like having a soft puppy’s tail whisked across your face.

And then finally, the rejuvenating section with red and infrared LED light is directed onto the face to reduce redness and boost collagen.

This is all done in just 30 minutes, and the technology allows for amazing results in a short amount of time. I had a dinner after the treatment and I didn’t even bother with tinted moisturiser; my skin was glowing and so plump.

As there is absolutely no down time, this is the perfect facial to have one or two days before the big day or even before your hen or honeymoon to make sure you are looking peachy as!

You can have several treatments to build up lasting results too. You can also just do an eye treatment or lip treatment which takes about 10 minutes – it’s the same high-tech system and gives great results for targeting those eye bags or for puffing up pouts.